


Drowning Under the Weight Of It All (I Wish I Could Let Go)

by tryslora



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Community: fullmoon_ficlet, Gen, Panic Attacks, Suicidal Thoughts, burdens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 16:52:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/902620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryslora/pseuds/tryslora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When his body aches from broken bones that never quite healed, with wrenched muscles and magic-induced migraines layered over the top, sometimes all Stiles can think about is <i>stopping</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drowning Under the Weight Of It All (I Wish I Could Let Go)

**Author's Note:**

> This contains spoilers as seen in the teaser for episodes 3x09 through 3x12. It was originally written for prompt #28 - Burdens at fullmoon_ficlet.
> 
> This just felt like it needed to be written. Stiles is so frayed in season 3. As always, I do not own the characters or world of Teen Wolf, and I’m not sure they’d hurt any less if I did.

This is what Stiles’s life has become: a series of bad driving scenes, where he’s racing from one scene of chaos to another, praying that no one dies (or is critically injured) in the time that it takes him to get from point A to point B.

It’s exhausting.

But the thing is, they need him. They may not _think_ that they need him, but they _do_.

They need their human. Their point of reason, their moment of rational thought. They need him for his perseverance and for his intelligence. They need him to do research, and to make random leaps of logic when the Adderall in his blood wears thin and his brain is pinging about in unexpected directions.

They _need_ him.

(Or maybe he needs them.)

Either way, he cannot let them down.

He presses the pedal down, hiking the Jeep up to a rattling 65 quickly as he edges onto the highway, threading between a pissed off sedan and a tractor-trailer. He shifts into the left hand lane and prays that any county cops who might spot his Jeep have already heard from his dad to just let him go by.

It’s handy that Dad knows now.

Except when the bad guys come to him and almost take him down, stabbing him in the chest, collapsing a lung. Three months of healing, and Stiles still has nightmares about seeing him with blood dripping over his hand, the knife in his chest.

He can’t think of that now.

He can’t think of it at all. _Ever_.

The only way through the madness is to keep going on, no matter what. Stopping is not an option.

But oh God, it _sounds_ like an option sometimes.

When his body aches from broken bones that never quite healed, with wrenched muscles and magic-induced migraines layered over the top, sometimes all Stiles can think about is _stopping_.

Ending.

There are times when he hasn’t slept in days and he’s terrified that he can’t get there in time, can’t fix the problem this time around, when he wonders just how _easy_ it would be to turn the car and let it drift out of the lane. 

It’s scary how vivid his imagination is, with the sound of the tires squealing and the feel of the impact of metal against stone when he crashes into the stone supports for one of the bridges across the highway. He knows what it would be like to have the Jeep fold around him, cradling his body in the metal coffin it would become.

Things would be quiet then.

It sounds so peaceful.

So tempting.

Isn’t it lucky, then, that the idea of simply ceasing to exist is so terrifying that it gives Stiles the shakes? That he thinks about death every day, and knows that it lingers around him, certain that people can smell it on his clothes because he can only stay one step ahead of the reaper. He is terrified of the idea of ending, and the only thing more terrifying is the idea that if he tried, he might fuck it up.

He might make things _worse_ somehow.

His fingers tighten around the wheel, gripping so tightly that he leaves impressions of the faux leather in his skin. His breath is rough and ragged as he tries to breathe through the panic attack that wants to overtake him.

He doesn’t have time for this.

He _never_ has time for this.

Because they need him.

(Or he needs them.)

It would be so easy to end it all, make it stop.

To rest.

But he can’t.

So he shoulders the heavy weight of responsibility, and he shoves the pain back down and tries to forget.

And he goes on.


End file.
